John Scurry's Reverse Swing - Aerogramme

2024
“Aerogramme” is the third album release from Reverse Swing, led by Melbourne guitarist John Scurry. Recorded in late 2023, this now well established group and cohort of players embark upon a host of new compositions of differing hues, prompting reflection and gratitude, while exercising a collective contemporary sensibility.

The fourteen tunes on this album have, as John has stated previously, “arrived as independent entities that perhaps have some musical promise”. They gain affinity through a common feeling for form and melody as a means to elicit a credible musical presence. Most of the tunes on this current album, as the titles may suggest, have been borne out of some lived moment that has triggered the imagination. Titles are a necessary afterthought when word and sound are meshed to become, hopefully, a more meaningful listen. “St.Cyr” initially was a three part set of chord changes in the manner of early jazz and ragtime or indeed choro, and in time it became an honoring of New Orleans guitarist Johnny St Cyr and the late 1920s period. Eugene as co -composer was integral to the melodic flow of this piece.

In the perennial custom of borrowing birdsong, “A Butcher’s Hook” was an accidental moment of arrested attention in encountering a new evocative and haunting song. As Raymond Carver’s poem “Make Use Of Things” suggests, this butcher bird’s plaintive song met the Spanish tinged rhythms of the New World. Finally, “Aerogramme” as overall title of this, our third CD album, perhaps encapsulates the general tenor of the various tunes, including the bonus downloads. For those of a certain generation when written communication, distance, and time were measured in weeks, if not months, the aerogramme or air letter, was the physical embodiment of cobbled moments, and sentiments made palpable. There is something alluring and attractive in the look of the word itself that implies histories, memories and feelings that meld with ”Aerogramme” and connects with the other tunes on the album which hopefully, accounts for a coherent if intuitive, conformation of songs without words.

“Aerogramme” was recorded over three days in late December 2023 with regular band members, Eugene Ball (trumpet), Brennan Hamilton –Smith (clarinet and bass clarinet), James Macaulay (trombone), Matt Boden (piano), Sam Keevers (piano), Howard Cairns (bass), Danny Fischer (drums) and John Scurry (guitar).
Special guests on various tunes are Stephen Grant (alto sax), Pierre Jaquinot (guitar) and Julien Wilson (tenor sax).

Stephen was a significant band member on our previous CD “Early Risers” and again his alto sax sound permeates beautifully in the horn section as do his beckoning solos. Stephen has played many a gig with the band over the years, primarily as pianist, but in this instance, as on “Early Risers”, he was enlisted for his distinctive alto sax sound, allied with his superb musicality. Julien Wilson, on tenor sax, added on his tracks his distinctive and at times plaintive sound to uncanningly navigate and draw out the emotional sense of the music at hand. After playing regularly with guitarist Pierre Jaquinot over the past few years, it was a great pleasure to invite him to be on this album and add his unique voice and seamless solos to a new grouping.